Executive Sponsorship

SharePoint is a business productivity platform.

In order for SharePoint to be widely successful and make an effective change in your organization, you need to plan, execute, and evaluate. Then plan, execute, evaluate. Again. Plan, execute, evaluate. Then do it again.
SharePoint lends itself to an iterative implementation approach. Your org will need governance planning, implementation planning, training, as well as roll out and long-term support. In order to be effective, you need executive buy in. Executive sponsorship ensures the project is given necessary support.

The executive sponsor

The executive sponsor needs to be an advocate for the organization both inside and out. The executive sponsor should be educated on SharePoint – what it is, what benefits it will provide, and why your org is using it.

We cannot stress this enough: your executive sponsor needs to be an advocate. No offense to any of the technical people reading this post (we all come from technical backgrounds), but no one wants to hear techie-talk about the benefits of the latest platform being installed. No one cares. It will usually be shrugged off or not taken seriously. People will listen to an executive sponsor. People will want to be involved. People will care.

Many people resist change. People stick with what they know. People like to do what they’ve always done. Why? That’s easy to answer. It’s the way they’ve always done it!

If you want to increase both the efficiency and efficacy of your organization on a massive level, it will take some planning, governance, training, adoption, and discipline. It is definitely worth it. However, it will take commitment. And this level of commitment needs an executive sponsor.